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In Hanoi, a House Built on Compromise

The couple's kitchen table is a piece of hardwood salvaged from a local woodworking shop, something that met Ms. Martin's environmental concerns as well as Mr. Tuan Anh's desire for beauty.Credit
Mike Ives

HANOI — Bettina Martin and Do Tuan Anh suspected that building a home together in Vietnam’s capital might be a challenge. But they did not think that it would shake the foundation of their relationship.

Ms. Martin is an environmental consultant from southern Germany who values efficiency above aesthetics, while her husband, a Vietnamese painter, is chiefly interested in how things look and feel. They met here in 1999 through a mutual friend and rented four houses over the next six years.

In 2006, exasperated by roof leaks and cockroach infestations, they bought a breezy vacant lot of 100 square meters, or 1,076 square feet, near the Red River and the next year commissioned Le Tien, an architect and friend, to design a concrete home.

But their visions about what the structure should, and should not, look like diverged wildly, even when it came to the kitchen floor. Ms. Martin preferred concrete tiles with a smooth glaze, in the French-colonial style, but Mr. Tuan Anh had walked on similar tiles while growing up poor in the Vietnamese countryside and wanted a change.

She eventually won, and ended up giving her husband carte blanche to design the rest of the interior as long as it did not include wood.

For example, he chose iron staircases, which he decided to varnish for effect, and some aluminum door frames from France that the architect purchased from a local importer.

Mr. Tuan Anh also built an iron wardrobe for the foyer and added iron support beams throughout the house, even though they serve no structural purpose. Ms. Martin still maintains that she does not see the point of the beams, but her husband says they are meant to convey a “factory feel.”

As the house began to take shape over eight months, on a budget of about 1.3 billion Vietnamese dong, or $62,400, the design changed constantly as the couple bombarded their beleaguered architect with conflicting preferences, suggestions and demands.

“Poor Mr. Tien,” Ms. Martin recalled. “He was more a psychologist than an architect to us.”

An early challenge was agreeing on a basic plan for an interior of 175 square meters. Mr. Tuan Anh said that he needed the entire second level for a one-room art studio while Ms. Martin insisted that the third level be divided into two rooms, a master bedroom and a home office. So instead of designing one simple staircase to run through the home’s center, the architect had to design three, modifying each one to suit its surroundings.

And then there was the question of water: Ms. Martin wanted a wastewater-recycling system to nourish a planned rooftop garden, even though such systems are all but unknown in Vietnamese homes. And, as Mr. Tuan Anh is a painter, they had to ensure that toxic waste from his studio did not drain into the recycling pipes.

Mr. Tien shuttled Ms. Martin around the city as they searched for materials, and at one point they even visited a local kitchen and bath appliance factory to see if the workers would build an environmentally friendly toilet.

The result, Mr. Tien said in an interview, is the most complex residential water system he ever designed. Wastewater now irrigates basil and squash in the rooftop garden, and the couple’s monthly water bill is only about 15,000 dong.

But the pipes remain a source of anxiety for Mr. Tuan Anh, who worries they will break and flood the house. “It’s a nightmare!” he said recently, sitting at the kitchen table.

The couple did agree on some points. One is a wood-burning stove they purchased for the equivalent of $500 from a German family. It satisfies Ms. Martin’s craving for winter warmth while lending some of the coziness that Mr. Tuan Anh feels the house lacks.

Another is their slender kitchen table, a discarded piece of hardwood that Mr. Tuan Anh salvaged from a woodworking shop and topped with glass. Ms. Martin loves wood, and this is a way for her to enjoy it without feeling she has compromised her ethics.

Ms. Martin said she has learned to love the more whimsical elements of their three-and-a-half-level home, like the wardrobe and those support beams that support nothing.

In fact, she said, if she had to build another house, she now would aim for the same factory aesthetic that her husband likes.

“It was almost killing our marriage,” Ms. Martin said of the whole process. “But it was also about learning new things. He taught me a little about the way I’d love to live.”

Mr. Tuan Anh said that in addition to the lack of wooden floors and stairs, he still disliked the kitchen's floor-to-ceiling windows, noting that many Vietnamese prefer darker and more private interiors for their homes. But he grows nostalgic at the thought of leaving.

In June, the couple will rent their home indefinitely and move to Germany, for their 5-year-old son’s education. They say that they are not sure if they will ever resettle in Hanoi, but they hope that the future tenants will agree to keep their eccentric kitchen table and grow vegetables in the rooftop garden.